Should We Expect The N64 Classic Edition This Year?
With the astounding success of both the NES Classic Edition and the Super NES Classic Edition, it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to think that Nintendo might be considering releasing the N64 Classic Edition. We know that the SNES Classic sold over 5 million and hasn’t even been available for a year yet. The NES Classic is getting released to the wild again on June 29 to try and satiate demand.
Rumors have swirled that Nintendo could follow-up those two systems with the N64 Classic Edition, especially since they filed a trademark for the N64 controller last year. Today they filed another N64 trademark in Japan, once again stoking the flames that an announcement could be imminent.
If Nintendo follows prior strategies, then we probably won’t hear about the N64 Classic Edition until after E3 – most likely sometime in July, with the console itself arriving in September or October. Of course this is Nintendo and it’s always difficult to know what they have planned for the future.
We also must remember that the N64 wasn’t nearly as popular in Japan as the Famicom or Super Famicom were. It did quite well in North America thanks to an influx of western developers creating games for the system and several megahits like Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, and GoldenEye 007. In fact, many of the system’s memorable games came from Rare, and they’re now owned by Microsoft. Plus, there’d be a ton of accessories to buy if you wanted to play 4 players at the same time. There’s a lot of hurdles in place for this system, and really when you think about it do you want to play the blurry, foggy N64 games on your TV these days? The 3D doesn’t hold up nearly as nice as the 2D sprites on the NES and SNES do. Plus the library of games is much smaller and there are less hits. Still, it’s not entirely out of the question!
If it does get announced, which games do you hope are included? Let us know in the comments!
[Source: Japanese Nintendo]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
